How to bring a 3.3 tonne laboratory from 21,240km/h to zero in 7 minutes...

[INerTIal]

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[MoorKhan]

Originally Posted by antipody

Opportunity used the crane too...

Opportunity (and Spirit ) used static rockets on their backshell purely for deceleration, where as Curiosity's crane is a full 6dof vertical lander.

Originally Posted by Oosh

... I appreciate the bouncing bubble wrap version does, but what about a hard aero-shell, opens after landing and rover drives out?

Viking style landers require relatively high vertical approach speeds to avoid issues with trenching, dust and ground pressure.

Also, because the engines are mounted on the lander its attitude and translation controls are linked, so they have to switch off their engines immediately on touchdown. This means your extra-reliant on touchdown sensors and if your landing on a slope it drops putting extra loads on the lander and reducing its stability. This in turn means you need extra engineering on the landing struts and the reduced stability means less potential landing sites.

The skycrane approach eliminates most of these issues. Because its not directly coupled with the lander, the engines can keep running at touchdown reducing potential issues with touchdown sensors, sloping terrain and stability. Also, the engines are up high enough that trenching etc. isn't a problem, allowing for a very low touchdown speed.

The low touchdown speed means the rover can land directly on its wheels, which removes the egress problem, which can be a significant design issue in and of itself.

Originally Posted by Diode

What could possibly go wrong?

The scariest thing about this whole complicated sequence is that they decided a 1g all up test wasn't worthwhile - so the entire system is untested (except for a basic drop test).

[Oosh]

Originally Posted by MoorKhan

[snip]

That makes a lot of sense. Cheers!

[antipody]

Originally Posted by MoorKhan

Opportunity (and Spirit ) used static rockets on their backshell purely for deceleration, where as Curiosity's crane is a full 6dof vertical lander.

Talk about engineering. The use of cables to drop the rover from the descent stage looked quite similar to the sky crane drop in the animations. It all happens so quickly you hardly see either of them but they look very similar.

The low touchdown speed means the rover can land directly on its wheels, which removes the egress problem, which can be a significant design issue in and of itself.

What about the egress down the cable from the crane a couple of hundred metres above hard rock? After travelling through the solar system for 8 months then being cooked beneath a tiny heatshild at 1600 degrees (F?) and experiencing over 9g (as in Earth g's) as a parachute is deployed. There's got to be potential for the heatshield or the rover to get stuck or something to fail.

But point taken, if you're gonna egress, you might as well do it in they sky.

The scariest thing about this whole complicated sequence is that they decided a 1g all up test wasn't worthwhile - so the entire system is untested (except for a basic drop test).

That is scary. What if the descent vehicle's flyaway stage fires before all the cables are detached? Send the thing flying. Pity she doesn't have balloons too.

[banshee]

You can also download the Mars Rover Landing Xbox360 Kinect game!

It is a bit of fun.

[andyroo54]

Originally Posted by Phido

I really hope the landing goes well.
We need this rover to make it. Nasa is finally taking Mars seriously.

So the Mariner, Viking, Pathfinder, Global Surveyor, Oddysey, MRO, TWIN rovers Spirit and Opportunity...yes, only now Nasa is taking mars seriously!

Seriously though, while Mars is pretty cool, it's a dead rock.. I'm much more interested in Saturns Moons, specifically Encheladus which actually has a liquid ocean and something causing a whole lot of it to vent into space.. If this Mars rover doesn't find anything (again) then NASA should look elsewhere..leave mars to other space agencies to have a crack.

Really hope this thing lands though.. If you've ever played the game "Lander!" (Zarch) then you know how difficult it is to land something!

[Tabris]

Been waiting years for this. Big risk, big mission.



Here, have a pretty decent doco

[antipody]

Originally Posted by Tabris

Here, have a pretty decent doco

Cheers for that Nice doco.

[.Radiant]

Originally Posted by Tabris

Been waiting years for this. Big risk, big mission.

movie

Here, have a pretty decent doco

watched this yesterday heh. Scary thing is they have a 40 minute delay ontop of the 7 minutes.

[KonMan]

Originally Posted by Diode

What could possibly go wrong?

Well I'll keep my ears open for teh news, so Monday 6th 3:31pm AEST?

Ahh, thanks for working out the time in AEST - will set an alarm to remind me.

[lithos]

I can bring a 3.3 tonne lab from 21,000KMH to zero in less than a second.

Wait, does it need to be intact?

[enzo_450]

[figrin]

Ok I am intrigued after reading up on the power source on the Curiosity.

How much are one of those old Soviet Sr-powered RTG? Looking at the recent electricity price increase it can't be that bad

[glimmerman]

All they need to do is put some slotted rotors onto the wheels and she'll be all good.

[Oryp Cainam]

Originally Posted by INerTIal

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